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Saturday, December 20, 2014

This
year has been rather disappointing for me in terms of the number of books that
I have been able to read. My shift to part time employment in March put a
severe dint in my free time and I had to prioritize the gigantic tomes included
in my epic Wheel of Time Read Along. Fortunately we are drawing to the close of
that series, so I will hopefully get my life back in the spring of next year.
We have been slogging through the series since December 2012, so I may need a period
of mourning at that point, but at least I should have more time for other
things! However, although I have read a lot of pages, I have unfortunately completed
a surprisingly small number of titles. Nevertheless, there are have been some
definite high points to my reading this year, so I thought that I would share one
of my favorites.

Whilst I am sorely tempted to declare Jan DeLima’s Summer Moon as my most favorite read of the year I am afraid that there was one title (well, it is actually two volumes of a series) that I have raved about even more. I have read quite a few of Brandon Sanderson’s titles, so when some blogging friends suggested a Read Along for The Way of Kings I jumped at the chance. Mr Sanderson writes at a prodigious rate and The Way of Kings was announced as the first volume in The Stormlight Archive, which is supposed to be a huge ten volumes in total. Volume 2: Words of Radiance was published in early March of this year, so we read right through both volumes over a twenty week period.

I have
always read Mr Sanderson’s works as Read Alongs and I am almost certain that
this has contributed to my massive enjoyment of his titles. The restriction of
only reading a set number of pages each week and then discussing the book as
you go along is wonderful because it allows you to really absorb the rich
detail and complex world-building that seem to characterize his writing. I fear
that reading at a more normal speed would lead to me missing some aspects of the
complexity of his plotting and character development. His worlds are just so lush
and rich with tiny points of wonderment that it seems appropriate to stroll
through them and enjoy every minute detail.

Firmly
situated in the Fantasy genre, The Stormlight Archive is Epic in every sense of
the word. We begin The Way of Kings by being plunged into the final moments of
an ancient battle that has left almost everything in the world dead or
destroyed. We see this through the eyes of an eternal warrior who has fought
this battle many times in the past and is destined to fight it repeatedly for
eternity. If that is not epic enough to take your breath away, we next move to
the present where an unimposing assassin dressed all in white displays the most
amazing magical abilities in order to murder a King. We see the attack through
the assassin’s eyes and learn how he manipulates gravity in order to outmaneuver
his opponents. If you have seen The Matrix, then imagine ‘bullet time’ writ
large: the imagery conjured by this sequence alone is worth the cost of the
book. The rest of the title builds upon this amazing start in ways that
actually made me squeal with delight in some places. Not only do we have an
amazingly creative and wonderfully imagined magic system, but we also have
original races, cultures, geography, weather, vegetation, wildlife, languages,
history, religions, socio-economic structures and a strange fascination with
the number ten.

However,
perhaps the most exciting creation to define this series is the concept of ‘spren’.
These are mostly manifestations of emotions, such as anger or pain, or natural
phenomena, like fire or the wind; however, it seems that some spren are
different. In The Way of Kings we encounter Syl, who appears to be a normal wind
spren although she has taken a special interest in one of our main characters.
Only he can see and hear her and she seems to be linked to his burgeoning
magical powers in some way, but even she has no idea what she is or why she is
different. It is with such intriguing creations that we are sucked into this
world and made to care about our heroes. As I would expect in such a complex
world, nothing is black and white, so our heroes are flawed and sometimes behave
like total idiots, whilst our villains are revealed to have motives that we can
understand even if they commit the most unspeakable crimes. Characters develop
in meaningful ways and make surprising decisions that can be massively
frustrating or jaw-droopingly awesome. This series is original and packed full
of surprises, so that even the most jaded Fantasy reader will be delighted and
surprised by the interweaving plotlines.

I
cannot truly convey how much I enjoyed these wonderful titles in such a short
post: honestly, I could write about them for an awful lot longer and go into
amazing detail of several hundred things that I LOVED about them. My only
criticism is one of pure practicality: these books are both monsters (Words of
Radiance is the maximum size that the publishers could bind into one volume)
and I would definitely recommend obtaining ecopies for comfortable reading . .
. but the illustrations that are included in the text make me want to say that
you should get paper copies as well so that you can really marvel at the world
that they portray . . .

Here are
two of my favorite pieces of artwork, one from each title. If you want to see
more, you can view them on Mr Sanderson’s website.